middle of the evening I heard her crying for me to come and help them
hold him,--he was raving. I didn't go very quick; I said, "Yes,--just
as soon as I've narrowed off my toe"; and when at last I pushed back my
chair to go, mother called in a disapproving voice and said that they'd
got along without me and I'd better go to bed.

Well, after I was in bed I began to remember all that had happened
lately. Somehow my thoughts went back to the first time Cousin Stephen
came to our place, when I was a real little girl, and mother'd sent me
to the well and I had dropped the bucket in, and he ran straight down
the green slippery stones and brought it up, laughing. Then I remembered
how we'd birds-nested together, and nutted, and come home on the
hay-carts, and how we'd been in every kind of fun and danger together;
and how, when my new Portsmouth lawn took fire, at Martha Smith's
apple-paring, he caught me right in his arms and squeezed out the fire
with his own hands; and how, when he saw once I had a notion of going
with Elder Hooper's son James, he stepped aside till I saw what a nincom
Jim Hooper was, and then he appeared as if nothing had happened, and
was just as good as ever; and how, when the ice broke on Deacon Smith's
pond, and I fell in, and the other boys were all afraid, Steve came and
saved my life again at risk of his own; and how he always seemed to
think the earth wasn't good enough for me to walk on; and how I'd
wished, time and again, I might have some way to pay him back; and here
it was, and I'd failed him. Then I remembered how I'd been to his place
in Berkshire,--a rich old farm, with an orchard that smelled like the
Spice Islands in the geography, with apples and pears and quinces
and peaches and cherries and plums,--and how Stephen's mother, Aunt
Emeline, had been as kind to me as one's own mother could be. But now
Aunt Emeline and Uncle 'Siah were dead, and Stephen came a good deal
oftener over the border than he'd any right to. Today, he brought some